The Vauxhall Corsa GSi Mates A VXR Chassis To An Insurance-Friendly Engine

Hot hatches are all well and good, but if you’re of a certain age, they’re ridiculously hard to insure for any vaguely sensible sum of money. That’s what makes the ‘warm’ stuff that sits just below particularly tempting: you get the aggressive looks and the driver-focused attitude, but with a more modest power output that won’t result in a premium that costs as much as the damn car.

If that sounds like your cup of tea, we’ve good news: Vauxhall has cooked up a sub-VXR version of the Corsa, and it has the potential to be the most tempting take on the ‘warm hatch’ mantle in the current market.

It’s called the Corsa GSi, and as we’d been expecting, it derives its styling from the full-fat VXR version. We’re talking 18-inch wheels, a big boot spoiler, an angrier front bumper - that sort of thing. But where it gets interesting is the chassis: it’s been given the exact same suspension and brake setup as its 202bhp big brother.

Frustratingly, there’s no word on what’ll power it yet, but our educated guess is that it’ll receive the 148bhp 1.4-litre inline-four currently used in other Corsa models. So it’ll still be reasonably enough, but potentially more satisfying - you’ll have to work just that little bit harder behind the wheel to make up for the power deficit. And you’ll have no trouble doing that, thanks to that stiffer VXR chassis.

We haven’t been given a view of the inside, but Vauxhall is promising leather Recaro seats, a leather “sports steering wheel” and natty aluminium pedals. It’ll have Vauxhall’s IntelliLink infotainment system, which includes Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility.

We’ll have more details about the car when order books open “later in the year,” Vauxhall says.